What happened to Superman’s panties? The makers of Man of Steel explain.

When Kevin Smith took a meeting with Jon Peters about making a Superman movie years ago, according to Smith, Peters had three stipulations: I don’t wanna see him fly, he doesn’t wear that f*cking suit, and he has to fight a giant spider in the third act. Two movies later, the world has a Superman movie that actually looks potentially good. But still the problem persists, what elements of the character do you keep, and which are just too silly? There’s a new featurette online with Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer talking about trying to make Superman “exist in the real world,” and they make the point often that you kind of get sick of it. But the part about how they could make the cape and the S and the boots all work (the S doesn’t stand for “super” anymore, it’s a Kryptonian symbol of hope), but not the red speedo is kind of interesting.

SAVE THE RED UNDERPANTS!

“You look at Superman and the cape has to be there, but you know what, I think the underwear outside of the pants is something maybe that can go.”-Deborah Snyder

“The reason that the underwear is on the outside of his pants is that it’s a leftover from Victorian-era strongmen. I probably looked at hundreds of versions with underwear, but it fell by the boards because I just couldn’t make it consistent with the world that we were creating.” -Zack Snyder

“We had to create a world where that kind of outfit was commonplace, to make it feel natural.” -Producer Charles Roven

One of my favorite parts of the filmmaking process is how much justification and mental gymnastics they have to go through in order to decide “Underpants on the outside? Eh, a little too gay.”

But it gives me hope that their thought process on this all seems to make sense. As much as I enjoyed The Avengers, I really wish someone would’ve taken Joss Whedon aside and said “Hey, you know the part where you have characters fighting an incoming army with a bow and arrow and a handgun? That’s kinda stupid.”

Because it was, yo. When I watch Iron Man and the Hulk and Thor fight a giant snake that jizzes flying aliens, I want to believe, you know?

This reminds me of the COTW from when they leaked the first still of this movie (like three g*ddamn years ago) where someone pointed out that the underwear was too gay, but a giant “S” that stands for “Super” was not.

That’s the way they spin it in the actual featurette but i’m sure that the reason for the lack of hair curl and yellow pants is the fact that DC comics lost a court case with the family of the original artist.

i hate all the people who try to rewrite the minutia of superman, like we have this alien who can essentially punch the planet in half, has eye lasers, freeze breath, can see through walls, and his only weakness is a peice of his home planed which is named after a completely unrelated element of the periodic table. but wearing trunks and having an S that means superman is just a little too ridiculous to sell. it seems like they are taking superman way to seriously.

It makes sense to me, the people spending hundreds of millions to make and market this film should take the character at least as seriously as the majority of the people they expect to shell out $15 to see it.

the problem with Christopher Nolan’s whole REAL WORLD super heros approach is that they spend way too much time trying not to be silly that it becomes pretty fucking silly. i prefer Marvel’s lets just be dumb and fun approach.

X-men 3 was all the rat’s fault, but the batman franchise was perfectly fine with it’s own ridiculousness. like the joker was pretty goddamn ridiculous as a character, a guy dressed like a clown who burned the mafia’s money and worked with all escaped mental patients. and in DKR batman recovers from a serious spinal injury in less than 6 months and beats bane because he automatically becomes better at punching. this superman is ashamed of it’s ridiculous past.

If he wears human clothes like a suit and tie over his super suit as Clark Kent, does that mean he just bunches his cape up in his underwear? Shouldn’t he look like he’s wearing a diaper if that’s the case?

I’m just not getting excited by this movie. Mostly because all I can think is that if I were Superman, I’d be using my x-ray vision on the ladies walking down the street and flying off before getting arrested. That was my plan when I was 10, anyway.

Forget his panties. I think the toughest part is going to be figuring out Clark Kent’s costume. If they don’t come up with a better disguise for him than some LensCrafters, that’s gonna take me out of the movie way more.

Exactly! Thank you. No matter what, we’re still looking at his crotch, so why not break up the monotony of the weird basketball-textured blue rubber suit (as Thornus says below) with something of a color break?

My problem with the lack of outerunderpants is that there really is nothing to break up the monotony going around his crotch area. As it is, he’s just in a giant blue leotard with an S on it. At least the New 52 redesign features a red belt that allows for some break in the costume. The blue-ish belt thingy with a gold buckle doesn’t do enough to break it up.

What I don’t get is why they don’t explain Superman’s costume as being the trendy thing over on Krypton. Dude is from another planet millions of miles away right? I’m pretty sure their sense of fashion would be different than ours.

Yeah, that’s my beef too. I think the Snyder’s forgot the original purpose of the outer panties. It’s much more distracting without. Also, where does he hide the superboots? No way do Clark Kent’s shoes slip over those.

I for one agree with the decision. The Victorian strongman thing makes sense, back when Houdini was a recent memory, people would closely associate Superman’s attire with “real” supermen. The fact that we call it red underwear worn on the outside shows that that part of the costume is outdated.

All I know is that I love the casting for this movie. Costner and Crowe as Superman’s fathers is a brilliant casting option. Both of them are incredible actors. I know people like to laugh at Costner for some of his epic failures but Waterworld and The Mailman weren’t acting failures, they were vanity failures where he ran the whole project and he was too up his own ass to realize that being a great actor doesn’t automatically make you a good producer / director / writer / whatever. And both Crowe and Costner are at that point in their lives where they carry the gravitas of a person who’s experienced a lot and is able to convey that knowledge and world-weariness through the tenor and tone of their voice and the pacing of their delivery.

Also, shoot, that 20 minute video of Kevin Smith talking about working on the previous incarnation of Superman made me realize that Smith is an excellent story-teller. I enjoyed listening to the entire 20 minutes. Dude is funny and just knows how to spin a yarn in front of a microphone.

The original Reeves flick already ditched the “S” is for superman schtick by making the symbol his family coat of arms, which the Daily Planet then interprets as an “S” causing them to name him Superman.

To me, that’s way less cheesy than krypton symbol for hope. Either way, Superman has always been the most boring superhero to me. “oh, so you can do everything and have all the powers?……..cool?”